Wall Street Buys Protection from the NYPD

It's no accident that the New York Police have been so assiduous in their protection of the big banking establishments that are housed on Wall Street and environs.

The banks don't like paying taxes, but they know how to buy the protection they need, as <a href="http://www.jpmorganchase.com/corporate/Home/article/ny-13.htm?TB_iframe=true&height=580&width=850">this page from JPMorgan Chase's website</a> makes clear.

It boasts that the company has bought the police a bunch of toys for their squad cars, and that is has financed spying software (they call it "security monitoring software") for the NYPD's main data center.

Given what we know about the NYPD's links to CIA domestic spying, and to its record of spying on and infiltrating legitimate, peaceful protest organizations, both in the run-up to the 2004 Republican National Convention, and to the current Occupation of Wall Street, it seems clear that all this is being done with Wall Street cash.

This kind of behavior is just like a Donut shop or restaurant letting cops eat free, only at $4.2 million, it's a much bigger bribe that's being paid. Whether a donut shop or a bank, it's a kind of corruption designed to win better protection from the police than the rest of us get, and in this case, it appears to be aimed at protection <em>from</em> us.

DAVE LINDORFF is a founding member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent alternative online newspaper that is funded only by you, the readers. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, LINN WASHINGTON, JR., and CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net[1]